


Here, waiting

by cuimhl



Category: The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: M/M, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-04-25 07:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4951609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuimhl/pseuds/cuimhl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pat and Achilles are planets in orbit who will always revolve around each other, every lifetime. 100 one-shots, prompts from HPFC!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beauty

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!  
> This is my first time ever posting writing, and it's terrifying to say the least.  
> HOWEVER, I love this fandom and the people here, and I hope that you enjoy this!!!  
> Please do drop a line if you have the time :)
> 
> PS: Each one-shot is supposed to be under 100 words but I've kept them around 100 instead (whoops).  
> THEARGONAUT OVER AND OUT

Summer, 2002

Pat picks up the silver case from the ground, shading his eyes from the sunlight that comes slanting in toward him, aware for a heart-stopping moment of a stranger walking by. Gold washes gold through like the work of enchantment spun into skin and bone, the striking countenance of a hawk turned human. Under a sky of cerulean blue, there is a second sun – a curly mop of hair, turn of the lips behind sinewy hand, and green eyes like shorn grass compressed. Heart shuddering in his ribs, he wonders -  


The moment passes and there is no beautiful stranger behind him, only a madcap giggle of toddlers.


	2. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting up two today! Thanks to everyone who's come by and taken a look (even left kudos!) !!  
> Feel free to drop a line if you have time :)

Autumn, ‘45

The leaves are turning bronze and Achilles is the one who suggests they take a walk. This is their week away from the front, in gloomy, slushing London. It’s no less exciting for Achilles, who is a fine dancer and finds partners queuing up at every turn, but Pat seems to find dancing a sore waste of time. Thus, Achilles pulls his sombre companion into a run under the shedding trees, a waltz of tangling limbs in its own way and as their woollen scarves toss up tassels in their faces, he grasps Pat’s collar and kisses him in the shade of an ancient oak.


	3. Dream

Autumn, 2067  


There are a pile of medical books stacked on the wicker chair on the right. When the nurse asked, Pat replied that it was for his youngest nephew who aspired to become a doctor. The truth is: it’s for himself. In the night, when his nursing home friends fall into comatose slumber they may or may not awake from, Pat dreams of the Second World War, first, of golden leaves and grey rain like nowhere but England; then of a boy – fair-headed, face-splitting smile and a tender touch, before his incandescent figure is swallowed by a vindictive black sludge and skin solidifies into shards of frost.


	4. Haunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two today!   
> Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read this so far, it actually means a lot :)  
> Hope you all are having a great day!

Winter, 2023

A car rumbles past his upturned thumb and Achilles curses under his breath. Apparently, not many people believe in the art of hitchhiking any longer in this century; how could he have known? He’s spent the last twenty years in a daydream called home-school and every waking hour in a hell called the library. There are no picture-books in the library. One would think he is just another rich father’s vagabond son, but he’s running away from more than four steel walls and an absent parent; there are ghosts of a dark-haired boy in the hallways, mumbling his name, and Achilles can’t help thinking it’s more than just a mansion’s bad karma.


	5. Memory

Winter, '39

Achilles is avidly devouring papers on the requirements for Basic and Pat just wishes the war never began. His best friend is a good man, that is an irrefutable truth, but Pat cannot pray enough for two people’s safety – if Achilles goes, he will have to follow. To occupy his time now, instead, Pat lets his pen scrawl imagery across his notebook page: a pomegranate bleeds dry as it passes from hand to hand, red and viscous sticky juice and a firework of sand kicked up by flashing pink heels.


	6. Fragile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Here is another one-shot, a bit more of an intimate one, I suppose.  
> In fact, it's a bit corny...but I hope it brings a figurative smile to your face :)  
> Have a great day and thanks for reading!!

Spring, ‘44

There is silence inside the tent like a leering black chasm, and it’s the deafening sort – filled to overflowing with Achilles’s thundering heartbeat, a painful hammer reverberating through his skull. When he reaches out to bridge that terrifying abyss, fingers light and nervous on Pat’s cheek, he is deathly aware and afraid of rejection. Pat shifts beside him, lips curling up into a sanguine smile, and Achilles leans in slowly; Pat’s lips are warm, and his skin is like a satin covering for some poetic furnace within. They say a first kiss is unforgettable, magical, but for Achilles: their lives are delicate and insubstantial, and the first kiss is their fragile hope finally substantiated.


	7. Celebration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Hope it is and is being a lovely day!  
> Over here it's raining, but the clouds are nice.  
> Thanks for reading and/or just dropping by!!

Summer, 2033

Pat’s fiftieth birthday is a quietly extravagant affair, with a few relatives and his daughter ordering him to drink aged red wine out of expensive glass decanters. “Just this time,” Mel promises him with a smile, “Because it’s your half-century.” When the people disperse and Pat succeeds in convincing Mel to go home to her children instead of hanging around making sure he eats his meds, Pat closes his eyes and tilts his glass to thin air. “Wish you were growing old with me,” he murmurs, and knocks back a final drink.


	8. Secret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! Sorry for missing a day, if anyone liked the chapters :)  
> The next two are a pair of sorts, so perfect timing!  
> Hope you're having a good day and thanks for reading!!!

Spring, ‘40

_If a certain PATROCLUS MENOITIADES attempts to enlist, deter him with any reason possible, and with necessary force. That is my one condition._

Achilles faces the door, hand lingering on the knob with a sort of languid sadness. The men came in darkness, asking for his prowess with a gun; in short, a draft. He’s done with the tears, the anger; only emptiness remains – certainty that he will not return, and hope that Pat will remain here, safe. Sealing the letter in a crisp envelope, he slips it in his pocket and presses a note under the paperweight on the table:

_Wait for me._


	9. Promise

Winter, 2005

Words stare up from the illuminated computer screen, and Pat rubs his eyes. It’s now the early hours of morning, past the witching hour, and the thread is coming to an end – the hero conquers the villain, has returned home, is finding room enough in his heart for love. However, this doesn’t feel like a proper ending; seems instead like a sorry excuse to end the tortuous journey he began six months ago. A novel! What a joke. Pat drums his fingertips beside the keyboard, wondering how to do this justice. Love is greater than the world, greater than this story – love is a promise and to write that is difficult, for where is the line between story and reality? Suddenly, his fingers move on their own, fuelled by a flash of _knowing_ the words:

_They look at each other and smile, and one of them says, “I’ve been waiting.”_


	10. Innocence

Autumn, ‘42

Tonight is cold, and Achilles voices this observation as he sits outside the tent with his CO. “Call me Carl,” the man says by way of reply, and he looks older than he’s ever looked in daylight, barking orders. “I have a question,” Achilles ventures at last, the drink loosening his tongue. “Are you a Catholic?”

Carl laughs a little, bitterness sounding sour as he answers, “No, but in this time almost everyone kind of is, aren’t they?”

Achilles tilts his head in agreement, and the next question leaves his lips without him really meaning it to. “What do you think about men loving men?”

“Asking for yourself?”

“Nah, just a thought. It’s like a taboo pop culture now.”

“That it is. You’re still an innocent sorta chap if you’re askin’ that; I think it’s terrible how it’s dealt with. But I don’t think it’s love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I've missed a few days, sorry about that.  
> Thus, here are two...which isn't much but it's a start. (I don't really like this one but here it is, apologies)
> 
> I have realised the potential for each prompt to be a happy one-shot but I've turned them all into slightly angsty ones, somehow. It's a thought for later on, maybe. Hope you have a great day and thanks for reading!


	11. Moonlight

Winter, ‘71

Sometimes in the stifling darkness of his room, Pat will fall asleep over paperwork without meaning to. He will dream of honey skin and golden curls, will twist them between his fingers, before the gold is dyed glaring crimson with blood – so much blood, pouring and pouring out of the sky –

_NO, he’s done with that, he’s left that behind now_

\- and Pat wakes up with a scream dwindling on his lips, drenched with cold sweat, and he will shake and convulse in moonlight silvering the room through an uncovered window, and imagine that it’s not terrified perspiration sticking to his shirt but blood instead.


	12. Whisper

Summer, 2014

The first time that Achilles is aware of it is when he is twelve, suddenly awake just after midnight in his empty room. Everything is ominous and sharpened to acute clarity, and as happens in the darkness, he is vividly alert to every sound and shift of shadows, and imagination runs rampant in all the unsavoury ways. Just as he is about to fall asleep again, he hears it: it’s a whisper somewhere in the caverns – of his room or of his mind, he cannot tell – and before he is gripped by paralysing terror (is it a ghost?!) Achilles registers a deep sadness in his chest at the lilting, tenor voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the inconsistency in posting! Here's two...yep.  
> Thanks for dropping by and have a great day :)


	13. Echo

Autumn, ‘99

As of late, Pat has found silent, open spaces of a peculiar kind of attraction. Thus, after graduation, his first destination for a year of travel is the Grand Canyon. At night, when the stars flare bright over his head and the darkness is deep and cavernous, he stands up in the light of his campfire and takes a deep breath of the dusty, empty air, and yells into the rocks. It’s an incomprehensible shout of feral frustration at the twisted plan of the universe, and the echo that comes bouncing back is just as lonely.


	14. Jealousy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been so long! Sorry for (forgetting) this. Anyhow, I intend to keep it going so...the one-shots continue.

Winter, 2061

They invite him to play at a nursing home, and Achilles obliges, because how can he not? The piano keys are silk beneath his touch, pliant and welcoming to the music that takes him by storm, but his heart is not at peace. Each weathered face that stares back at him with the papery skin and sunken eyes reminds him of the desolate end that awaits those without glory in their name – and, simultaneously, the safety and contentment he imagines he has forgone before. One man with dark curls receding down his scalp holds his gaze, and Achilles looks away first.


End file.
